The Lost Art of Lamps
by wizened cynic
Summary: Judith. Joan. Summer at Mental Acres.


**Disclaimer:** Nope, not mine, I only own the dirty thoughts.  
**Rating: **PG-13 for language and very mild slash  
**Summary:** Judith. Joan. Summer at Mental Acres.

* * *

Judith wasn't crazy. She just didn't care. 

She skipped forty-two consecutive days of school, and the principal told her parents that maybe she should go to another school that gave her more incentive to learn, and would she please give him back the school flag before she left?

So, as a punishment, only Bill and Fran didn't like the term punishment ("honey, Gentle Acres will be good for you"), they sent her to Mental Acres, while they were off in Europe going to shrink conventions and talking to other shrinks about their successful lab experiments, none of which included Judith.

Judith didn't care about Bill or Fran or Europe, and she definitely didn't care about Mental Acres. She had been there before. It was a crazy camp for people who weren't crazy enough to be locked up, but crazy enough to be temporarily put aside.

Everybody knew her there, and everybody who didn't before knew her within twenty-five minutes. Her roommate, a hypochondriac, freaked when Judith lit her cigarette and complained that Judith was given her emphysema. So, no more roommate and no more cigarettes, but Judith didn't want a roommate to begin with, and cigarettes she had plenty stashed in places they'd never know to look, and she sure as shit didn't care about emphysema.

She smoked outside that evening, while everyone else was singing songs around a fake campfire, and a couple of other sociopaths joined her. One of them brought out a dimebag of cheap pot, and Judith went back to her room to bring out the liquor.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sometimes, Judith didn't get out of bed.

Sometimes, she would feel empty, like a car that had run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and it was a stolen car anyway, so whoever stole it wouldn't bother coming back for it, and it would just lie there forever.

So she stayed in bed and when the people start banging on her door, she would yell at them to fuck off, her parents paid good money for her to come here so they'd better leave her the fuck alone.

The people who banged on her door were always the counselors or the cleaning crew or the people in charge of forcing the campers to eat (they were big on eating at Mental Acres). Her therapist never banged, because he had to be paged first, and the people she'd hung out with were hanging out with someone else who provided cigarettes and booze.

Judith never opened the door, and nobody cared.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Judith got her outside privileges suspended after she set a basketball hoop on fire. It wasn't really her fault, but nobody believed her. Her therapist decided that she was acting out, and the way to stop her from acting out was to send her to Arts and Crafts.

Arts and Crafts were a haven for the obsessive-compulsives. They were always color-coding pipe cleaners and arranging crayons from longest to shortest, and they snapped at you if you knocked anything over. They were too crazy for Judith, so she sat in the corner with the Lamp Girl.

The Lamp Girl was gluing googly eyes onto a lampshade. Judith had never seen anyone focus so hard on gluing googly eyes. She ignored her paint-by-numbers kit and watched the Lamp Girl with fascination as she finished the eyes and started sticking on little squares of brightly-colored tissue paper. When the lampshade was finally done, Judith said, "That is awesome."

The Lamp Girl looked up at Judith as if she had materialized out of nowhere, which she kind of did. "Thanks. I'm Joan, by the way."

"Judith. I hate arts and crafts."

Joan shrugged. "I like lamps."

Judith watched Joan start on another lamp, and then they had lunch, and then Judith had a session with her psychiatrist wherein she bitched about having her outside privileges suspended. He nodded, pretended to understand.

The next day, Judith went back to Arts and Crafts, and Joan waved for her to come over. "What do you think about a newspaper-themed lamp?" she asked. "My brother writes for a newspaper. I'm thinking we can cut out bits of magazine and stick them on, like those ransom notes you always see on TV."

Judith helped Joan cut out the magazines, and Joan told her about Kevin, who used to play football. Now he played wheelchair basketball, and found a new talent for writing. Joan's other brother, Luke, was a science geek, so Judith suggested that maybe Joan could make a geek-themed lamp for him after she was done with Kevin's.

Judith and Joan worked on her lamps everyday, and Judith liked that Joan never seemed surprised to see her there. Like Joan knew she could come, the way Judith knew Joan would always be there. They talked a little about lamps, but mostly Joan talked about her boyfriend Adam, who was the real artist, and her friend Grace, who hated everything but not in a way that made her crazy.

Joan's family sent her boxes of stuff every week. Judith read an article about a dispute over lawn ornaments which Kevin wrote. She ate M & M brownies that Joan's mother sent.

Bill and Fran sent a postcard from London ("We miss you, sweetheart") but Judith never showed anyone.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

People stopped calling them by their names and just called them "Joanith," it was easier. Both Judith and Joan answered to it. Judith loved to hear it, and sometimes at night she would say it in her head, "Joanith Joanith Joanith." It sounded ridiculous, but it made her feel like she belonged somewhere, to someone else.

Not everyone called them Joanith of course. There was this one psychopath, the one responsible for the flaming basketball hoop in the first place, who called them "cunt-sucking dykes."

Joan pulled Judith away the first time Psychopath said it, but the next time Judith faced him alone, she made sure she hurt him enough that he never bothered her or Joan ever again.

The moral of the story is: never underestimate the power of a glue gun.

Judith was confined to her room for three days and banned from Arts and Crafts forever. Woodworking was out of the question, but like she really wanted to make a tie rack.

The second night in her room, she realized she'd screwed up. She knew everyone was calling her a fucking psycho now, an armed and dangerous psycho, and Joan would never go anywhere near her again.

She wanted to cry, but instead, scratched the insides of her wrists until she broke the skin.

The third day, she didn't get out of bed.

The morning after, she lay staring at the ceiling when someone started banging on the door. Somehow she found the energy to tell whoever was behind the door to leave her the hell alone.

"Judith, it's me!"

Judith opened the door. Joan was practically hopping up and down, her doctor must have put her on crack or Ritalin or something. "What are you doing here?" Judith asked.

"We've got lots to do. Get changed and we'll go have breakfast. It's crap, but we can ask for Cocoa Puffs. Afterwards, we can work on my mom's lamp. I need some ideas on a housewife theme."

"Can't, JoJo." For once Judith was actually disappointed she couldn't do something as stupid as make a housewife-themed lamp. "I attacked someone, remember? I'm pretty much never allowed make anything again, ever."

"Well, then, what are you allowed to do today?"

Judith made a face. "I do have my outside privileges back. I'll do something I hate, like group sports or something."

"Ugh, group sports. Hate them too. But I'll come with you."

Judith looked at Joan incredulously. "What?"

"We're Joanith. I can't, like, _abandon_ the ship or whatever. How about volleyball?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Joan sucked at volleyball. So did Judith. They looked like idiots, but Judith didn't mind.

Despite how much she insisted she hated volleyball, Joan really got into it. Everyday she said to Judith, "Today, I will hit that ball. I will not run away from it. I will not close my eyes when I see it coming over the net."

"No running, no closing eyes. Got it." Judith grinned, knowing that the second the ball was in there air, Joan would freak out.

But Joan always tried. It was one of those Things About Joan that amazed Judith.

Judith tried too, because there was something about Joan that made you want to try a little yourself.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**Things About Joan That Amaze Judith: A List**

She gets incredibly focused when she's into something, and she never gives up.

She's never impressed or fazed by anecdotes about Judith's past experiences.

She has nametags on her clothes ("My mom sewed them on. She treats me like a nine-year-old at camp.").

She doesn't care much about what other people think of her.

She sticks around, doesn't leave.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Once, Judith had this hilarious idea that would she knew would never work out, but she told Joan anyway, so that they could laugh about it.

"You know what would be awesome?" she said, already grinning just thinking about it.

"What?" asked Joan, with equal enthusiasm.

"You know those paint-by-numbers kit they used to make me do at Arts and Crafts? There's one for Edvard Munch's The Scream. We should totally blow it up and paint it on the back wall of the staff bathroom. We should do it at night, so that when they open the door first thing in the morning, they see this big screaming guy looking at them while they piss."

Except it would be impossible: they didn't have the bathroom key, paint dried too slow, and Judith never really figured out the instructions for those paint-by-numbers kits.

But it didn't matter. Joan laughed, and that was the whole point. "That would be so great. You're a genius, Judith, I love you."

Judith couldn't help but smile a little bigger, even though she knew Joan didn't mean it that way.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Judith wasn't crazy. She just didn't care.

That much.

Bill and Fran sent another postcard, and Judith didn't rip it up.

She cut down on cigarettes, played volleyball, thought up new ideas for designing lamps.

And she always got out of bed in the morning.


End file.
